One Family, Three Memoirs, Many Competing Truths

The three memoirs written by Augusten Burroughs (Running With Scissors), his brother John Elder Robinson (Look Me In The Eye) and mother Margaret Robinson (The Long Journey Home) are almost a textbook case in how unreliable memory can be.

the firstborn (often to young scared parents) has a very different upbringing than the last child (born to older, more "jaded" parents).

In families with large gaps of time between children, sometimes the older children end up raising the stragglers at the end.

The further into parenthood that parents go, the more likely it is that Mom will spend less time with the children as she works outside the home more.

It's just logistics..

In abusive homes (I have personal experience with that one :(.., secrecy plays a big role in the family dynamic, and often children are deliberately "cut from the herd" to be picked on or chosen as the abused one.. Guilt, shame and hurt often color the memories as we move through life, so it;s not unusual to me at all that different kids have different takes on it.

The events are so wildly bizarre (if there's any truth in Augusten Burroughs' memoir) that it's fascinating to see how three different people recall their lives.

:)

I grew up in an abusive home and boy was it well covered up. First of all my family had money, education and intelligence. There were different flavors of abuse. My father couldn't stand my brother (the only boy out of the 4 children) and he tormented him- mostly mentally- as only someone who is really smart and really good with words could. He played these sadistic horrible games. My mother, at least protected him- he was sent away summers from the time he was around 8. He was sent to boarding school at 10. He spent his winter vacs in places like Austria. I know, I know. It doesn't sound so bad. It was. And of course there were the times that my father lost it physically. Not just with my brother. I still have a scar in the middle of my forehead. He came home early one day and I was in his library. I'd pulled a bunch of (rare) books off the shelves and he threw an ashtray at me. Once he was chasing me and I was so freaked out I went smashing through a glass french door to get away from him.

But man, could we fool people. Lots of charm. taught to be smart, well behaved and good conversationalists. Taught never to talk about anything painful. My mother's favorite little sayings were "discretion is the better part of valor" and "keep a stiff upper lip".

And then there was my mother's abuse of me and well, other kinds of abuse.

Yep, the perfect family. By the time my older sister was fifteen, she had a huge bald spot on the crown of her head from pulling her hair out. I bit my fingertips bloody.

My sisters and I aren't in contact and they won't talk about any of it. Never would. My brother and I basically share the same take on it and many of the same horrible memories.

i would read your book. so happy that you've traveled so far and grown up so well in spite of it all.

I don't know what made me post that. I'm still so used to hiding crap. And the only reason I managed to survive, I think, is luck and a complete breakdown which resulted in being essentially disowned. Toward the end of his life, my father and I came to some sort of understanding, but my mother and I are completely estranged- and the last year of my father's life, my mother got back at him in spades. She put him in a fancy nursing home, about a mile from the new house they'd just built in the town I grew up in in CT and she was unbelievably horrid to him. The house was perfectly set up for someone who was infirm- bathroom accessibility, elevator, quarters for a live in nurse, but she wouldn't let him spend so much as a night there and his last Christmas she consulted her lawyer before she let him come over to make sure that he couldn't just stay if he wanted to.

i'm thinking that you are as well as you are because that toxicity is out of your life. fuck them disowning you! you got much better ways to spend your time and your emotional capital. :thumbsup: